Telephone Jacks 101
(Or how to easily find and fix static problems and save $100 bucks)

Static and problems with individual phone sets are in many cases easily solved if you just know where to look first. This tutorial will help you with one of the simpler ways to find and fix small nagging problems that has to do with telephone jacks, or outlets.

On all jacks, or outlets, there is an "up" and a "down" when it comes to how they are attached to the wall. The correct way is for the "pins" to always be on the top. The reason for this is so that dust won't collect on the pins if nothing happens to be plugged into that outlet for awhile. Just remember, you should always have to put your finger UNDER the plug in order to unplug it. In our experience, we found that you can almost always go around the office and find at least 1 or 2 jacks that have been put in upside-down. You'll have problems with the phone that's plugged into an upside-down outlet first, and if your system is an AT&T Partner, Spirit, Comdial or Panasonic it will cause problems with the next lower or higher intercom numbered phone as well.

If you do have trouble, and you think it may have something to do with the jack, or outlet, this is what you do: Get a pencil with a NEW eraser and push it GENTLY back and forth 5 or 6 times inside of the jack. The material on the eraser will clean those pins pretty well, and if need be it will work great on the cord (on the plug) too. This little trick will work great 50% to 70% of the time, but even if it does clear the problem, get a new jack to replace that bad one.

Once static is present and it originates with a phone jack there's almost always a little corrosion present that you won't be able to remove causing the original problem to return within a few weeks. If you should need to replace the jack, you'll need to know that they come in three flavors, typically. One is a 4 conductor, or 4 "Pin" jack, and the other two are 6 conductor and 8 conductor. Most systems use 4 conductor jacks, and a lot of our newer "digital" systems use 2. Now, these little jacks, and the connectors that plug into them are actually quite ingenious devices. They are designed to be connected and disconnected thousands of times, but still work good enough so that no data is lost and so that you shouldn't hear any static when you're on the phone. A small description might be in order: If you look inside of the hole where we plug in our phone, you'll see at least 4 small "pins" that make contact with the plug that we plug in. You'll notice that they are gold in color, and I think you might be surprised to learn that they are actually plated with a fine coating of real gold! That's because gold is one of the very best conductors of electricity that we know of. The actual coating is awfully thin, but it works great in terms of making good contact. And there you have it, the inside story of telephone jacks!

And by the way, we would like to invite you to take a look at our new website, as we've revamped our site and added a bunch of new content on maintaining as well as a survey for folks who have recently purchased systems, and we are now offering our seminars as a course on VHS video in NTSC, for those in the U.S., and PAL for those in the international community. I would appreciate any comments regarding your thoughts on our site and anything we can do to make it a better one for you, our customers.

We hope our tutorial helps you, and if we can be of further assistance or if you have a problem you just can't seem to get remedied, call or email us at tellearn.com, our advice is good and you can't beat our price, because it's FREE!!

Chris Walsh
Telephone System Learning Seminars, Inc.
http://tellearn.com